The present invention relates to a nest assembly for encouraging egg production by domestic fowl and, more particularly, to a nest assembly that provides an improved nest basin with indicators and a timer to determine the duration a hen remains on the nest.
Domestic egg production farms, such as turkey farms, provide large banks of individual nesting assemblies in which a hen can lay an egg. After the hen has entered the nest and has laid the egg, the hen may tend to remain sitting on the egg and become what is commonly referred to as "broody". A broody hen will want to remain on the nest to hatch eggs and will no longer produce eggs.
In order to delay hens from becoming broody, an operator can remove the hens from the nesting assemblies if they remain too long. Some attempts have been made to provide ejectors for the hen to eject the hen from the nest after a time period, but these are generally unsatisfactory. Proper flock management requires that the operator know the status of each nesting assembly in order to keep the nests available for hens that are laying eggs. Specifically, the operator must know when a hen is present on a particular nesting assembly and, more importantly, the amount of time the hen has remained on that nesting assembly. Given the large number of nesting assemblies used on the farms and the large number of hens in most flocks, it is impossible to manage by periodic visual checking of the nests.
There is a need for an improved nesting assembly, which indicates entry and presence of a hen and which indicates when the hen remains on the nesting assembly more than a set time. Such nesting assembly should provide the desired features without discouraging hens from entering the nesting assembly or complicating the task of gathering eggs.